


The Top Five Acts of the First Annual Atlantis Talent Show

by havocthecat



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Atlantis is a Family, Gen, Gilbert & Sullivan, Humor, Society for Creative Anachronism, five things, gen - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-09-12
Updated: 2006-09-12
Packaged: 2017-11-05 01:23:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/400369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/havocthecat/pseuds/havocthecat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Atlantis Expedition comes together looking for entertainment, and also to blackmail their fellow members into performing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Top Five Acts of the First Annual Atlantis Talent Show

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted [here on LJ](http://havocthecat.livejournal.com/413633.html?style=mine).

Er, this one wasn't from a prompt, but I couldn't resist writing it. Blame [](http://meeshy.livejournal.com/profile)[**meeshy**](http://meeshy.livejournal.com/) for encouraging me!  
  
 **The Top Five Acts of the First Annual Atlantis Talent Show**

1\. Laura Cadman, Kate Heightmeyer, and Teyla Emmagan put on quite a moving rendition of "Three Little Maids" from The Mikado.

Laura Cadman had to be ordered to participate, first by Major Lorne, then by Colonel Sheppard, and then, finally, Dr. Weir cornered her at dinner one night, and no matter how you tried to weasel out of a direct order by your two most superior officers, you just didn't say no to Dr. Weir. She was just too _nice_ about everything, and besides, if Cadman didn't do it, Dr. Weir said she was probably bound to find yourself on KP for the rest of her rotation. Explosives? KP? Laura knew which choice she had to make.

So she sucked it up, grabbed a laptop and started listening to all the illegal music in the expedition's database, and inspiration struck when she found out Kate had been a drama minor in college. Under the pretext of needing therapy, she got Kate vulnerable and alone, and blackmailed her with threats of getting her friends back on Earth to pick up copies of old yearbooks from Kate's high school.

She'd tried to get Miko to play Yum-Yum, under the premise that Miko was actually Japanese, but Miko flat-out hated Gilbert & Sullivan, and also had no sense of pitch. Once she heard that Laura was thinking that bathrobes would work for kimonos, however, Miko's sense of cultural outrage was triggered and she took over costuming.

Never underestimate an explosives expert on a rampage to avoid KP. Her next target for Yum-Yum was Teyla Emmagan, who had already declared her intention to share traditional Athosian melodies. (She did, too, and they were lovely. The anthropologists fell all over themselves trying to record the performance.) She gracefully declined the first five times Laura asked her, but Laura enlisted Dr. McKay and Dr. Beckett. Dr. Beckett was glad to help, but Dr. McKay's favorite Phillips screwdriver was held hostage and threatened with a citrus coating for an unspecified number of hours.

Did we mention that somehow Radek Zelenka got drafted to play the Lord High Executioner? No, seriously. But Colonel Sheppard wasn't allowed to play Nanki-Poo. He volunteered. (Of _course_ he volunteered.)

2\. Someone, somewhere, got the idea that Carson played the bagpipes. Carson suspected that Rodney was responsible, but he wouldn't put it past Colonel Sheppard. (In reality, it was Katie Brown, but who would ever suspect her?) After he'd soundly disproven that idea, he was pressured into reciting a Shakespearean monologue from Macbeth. After spending the entire week before the talent show memorizing lines (and trying-yet-failing to convince Laura to play Lady Macbeth), he'd stood up on stage, blanked, and started belting out drinking songs. Oddly enough--no, really, very oddly--Elizabeth knew all the same songs, and she was shoved onto stage by Colonel Sheppard and Ronon after they'd caught her singing along under her breath.

The resulting sing-along they led the entire audience in was a resounding success.

3\. Did you know that Parrish and Stackhouse were both in the SCA? Parrish was out of the Middle Kingdom, and Stackhouse was out of Calontir, but they'd both been to Pennsic. It took them weeks to remember to call each other by their mundane names, and it really was a shame that Atlantis Kingdom was never going to be declassified. Still, they'd managed to make armor and weaponry before Zelenka had caught them using most of the expedition's stash of duct tape.

They'd figured a public display of boffer fighting was the perfect way to recruit. Ronon and Teyla? Were both _really_ interested. So Stackham and Parrish weren't actually sure if they'd succeeded or not until after the bruises from the first practice session had healed.

4\. Laura Cadman. Again. Never underestimate the combined power of a guilt trip from Dr. Weir, combined with Kate and Teyla's discovery of the fact that Laura took belly dance lessons all through college, which wasn't all _that_ long ago-- Well, there was an impromptu trip to the mainland for decorations for a costume (not to mention a costume, period), and Teyla made fun of them the whole way back for their attempt to explain the concept of spandex and sequins to the Athosians. At least she'd gotten a traditional Middle Eastern piece from one of the Arabic scientists, so she didn't have to try to improvise something to Shakira.

5\. Rodney McKay got his hands on some kind of an Ancient synthesizer, reprogrammed it, and played Beethoven's Turkish March. Apparently over the years, he'd learned something about expressing emotion and passion (he'd learned a lot on Atlantis, after all), because it was a soundly resonant piece that moved everyone who heard it.

Two words: Standing ovation.

**And One Act No One Wants To See Again**

Kavanagh. Kurt Cobain wannabe. Do I _really_ need to say any more?

**Plus One That Never Happened**

Laura really did _try_ to bribe Major Lorne to do a strip tease on stage, and she was _that_ close to succeeding. Really, it was a shame she couldn't manage to get him drunk just before the show.


End file.
